The birth rate in Spain is 1.32 births per couple. This means that most couples have only one child, with some of 2 and 3 children (or more) who are those who raise the average a little above the "1 child per couple". The reasons are diverse and the economy and job insecurity have a lot to do. Surely there are many couples who would like to have more than one and cannot, but if you are one of those who think about it and have not just decided, it may help you today.
How? Well, giving you the different reasons why you would have to have two or three children (or more, if someone is encouraged and has space at home), which surely are not all there are, but of the most important at least for me, I have three children. Keep reading, because here come the 14 reasons why you should have more than one child.
1. Because love does not divide, it multiplies
You think you love your child so much that it is unfair to have another, that you will love him less, that you will not be able to love him the same and that he does not deserve it. But the day that comes you realize that It's absurd, you love him a lot, you fall in love with him as you did with the first and, although he is not the first, as if he were. And all that without stealing love and love from the first. You realize that love is not divided and that you can love both unconditionally, and there is nothing better in the world than to realize that you are capable of loving more madly a little person.
2. Because they learn to share
There is a highly recommended rule that says that if you have two children, the ideal thing is to have duplicate things to avoid conflicts and misunderstandings. It serves most of the times because when one fights for what the other has, you say "take yours" and you already have them both happy (sometimes it is even worth it to be the same so that they do not appreciate the minimum difference which will make them want the other), but this rule does not always work because not everything can be duplicated. There are things whose price, value or size does not allow us to get two, so they will have no choice but to learn to share. Yes, of course they fight, and yes, of course sometimes they even hurt themselves to get it, but minutes later they play without problems with it, or without it (or the object in question lacks the minimum interest) and they become brothers again of the soul and the best friends. Without a doubt, it is a very valuable learning for the outside world.
3. Because you will amortize the camera you bought, or the mobile with a good camera
That your first child was born and you realized that the photos were all moved and hey, since you made them, it was a shame that almost none was useful, so you bought a new camera or took advantage of the fact that the mobile was in the last ones to get you one of those who make you a thousand or so consecutive photos and then you choose the one that seems best to you. Well look, since you have it, with a second child you take advantage of it again. Yes, you're not going to take 500 photos per week of the first one, you probably won't reach 50, but you'll expand the family album and memories for the future.
4. Because you can put into practice everything you've learned with the first one
That with the first child everything is doubt, that you do not know if one day he will sleep all night, that you think he will be crying at the door of the sink, waiting for you to leave, until age 5, which gives you the feeling that the tantrums stop doing them at 10 years old, that you are scared to say that not in case you create a trauma or get angry with you, that you are wrong to err with the stroller until you realize when you are already a few months old it is absurd to insist because it always ends in the backpack, that… there are so many things that you learn with the first, straight as a nerve stick, always with the doubt of thinking that you could be doing better, that with the second life gives you a second chance, to put into practice everything you've learned.
Yes, that is the second and that is different from the first, and that not everything you did with number 1 serves with number 2, but many things do, and especially one: you are already much more relaxed. You know that the day will come when he will sleep well, so you take it with philosophy and do not try to force anything, what others tell you enters you by one ear and leaves you by the other (it is that you do not even listen to it), tests with the stroller, but you have no problem retiring it a month and "if not, it is not, and look, how cool! let's play with what I have!" (you reach the expert level in conflict resolution with dad and mom).
5. Because the furniture will last for years and years
Once the first one paints them, grates and hits them with their motorcycles, cars and toys, when you are thinking that they are already battle furniture and that they would have to be changed the second arrives. Well you don't change them anymore. They may already be fatal, who does not like, do not look: why change them if they will scratch, hit and paint again?
6. Because they will play together
That with the first one, you realized that playing alone doesn't suit you, at all. That you buy a toy and at 2.5 minutes he tells you that he wants with you, that the toy does not know what it is for and that the box, once it has been broken, has no more mystery. That day you realize that the important thing is not the toy, but the game, and if you want me to play and be entertained you must be there, playing. And you do it, day after day, week after week, month after month.
And the second one arrives and you say "Oh, mother of God, to see how I do it now to dedicate the same time to both of us", but time goes by and you don't know how, you find a way to play with both of them and you give yourself Count something you didn't have: they play with each other. There are times that don't call you! And you know that when they don't call you, it's because they are doing something terrible. Then you run, panicked, and when you open the door you realize that they are playing together, so quiet. And you smile, and you love to see them like that, and you see how great it is that one has the other (so until one day, panicking, you do the same exercise and you find the apocalypse in the room ...).
7. Because you extend the period of caring for a baby
That babies grow very fast and all that time of infinite tenderness, to see them breathe, to caress their little hands, to comb their little hair, to smell them with their nose stuck to their skin and to kiss them in the mofletitos leaves. All that time goes away and doesn't come back, because your baby is already a child and you can't do all that anymore. Other things yes, or similar, but that time of so much dedication and so tired, but basically so beautiful, does not return.
Don't come back unless you have another baby. And you have another opportunity to kiss, smell, look, feel and hug with little effort all your little body that depends entirely on you.
8. Because you extend the period of caring for "rag tongue"
And how funny they are when they start talking and say everything in their own way? That time when they are 2 and 3 years old, so desperate, but so beautiful at the same time, that they are still tiny and achuchables, that they still have a baby belly and those mofletitos, and they talk in that funny way. Guim, my third child, is now 3 years old, and I keep thinking that I should stay there, in the 3 years forever, because he is small, but independent (everything that can be done with 2 brother brothers at home), because he has things with all the expressiveness he has and in the end you don't care what he says, because you are only thinking about take him in his arms and give him a giant hug how funny he is.
9. Because the older one will help you with the little one
One can and should be responsible for their things and for themselves, for schedules, to have things in order, to achieve their autonomy to depend less and less on others and, in addition, one can learn what it is to be responsible for someone else. The elder brother is the one who most easily learns that because since he is a brother he acquires the role of elder, as a mirror, as a model for the little one, and much of what he does and says will be what he does and says. They will play together, yes, but the eldest will be "the elder brother", who helps the parents and who at many times will act as a responsible person (sometimes I hear the older man throwing his throat in the middle and I have to end up intervening because he sulphides that we parents!).
10. Because they learn to negotiate
Following the above, and related to the one they learn to share, the brothers learn to negotiate. They have no other. That if one wants to watch a channel and the other, another. That if it's my turn to play I don't know what. That you ask an open question and each one answers a different thing. At first it is hard for them, because they are able to take their decision to the Supreme Court, but over time, with dialogue and our help, they are able to reach agreements and yield, and it is incredible when you see them from outside, without intervening, negotiating and deciding how to share something, or how to divide the time to play with something.
11. Because you will start laughing with the little boy imitating the older
That one will appear in disguise and the little one too. That you will see the oldest dancing and the little one, too. And so with a thousand things that one will do and the other will imitate. Y you will laugh a lot with both of us and you will realize how much the little one can admire the elder and at that moment you will love them even more. The oldest for being the way he is and the little one for following him. Those moments when you will forget that minutes ago they fought for any nonsense.
12. Because you will take advantage of each other's clothes, and the pots, and everything ...
You are afraid of not having more than one child for the expense but you will soon realize that the expense you did with the first. You already have all the pots, and even toys, and you can take advantage of a lot of things. You just have to recover what you saved just in case and offer it to the little one. You will even realize that he plays with things that the other did not touch and takes advantage of things that you thought you would never use (or not, maybe I will show you that you bought something that not even two children have come to use).
13. Because they will learn what trust is
And also distrust. Because many times they will get together with other children and realize that not everyone thinks the same. It has happened to me with my children who, playing with other children, have come to set aside one of the two; and the other did not defend his brother as much as we would have liked or expected. The power of the group is so high, so strong, so sweet and striking, that they have become silent in the face of such an injustice (it has happened in both directions, the middle one laughing at the eldest with other children and, on another day, the eldest saying nothing when those of his age said that his brother, because he was smaller, could not go with them). Well, there we entered dad and mom to defend the humiliated, to give value to your sibling relationship above all and to make them see that having friends is something magical and wonderful, but sometimes dangerous.
And that is the important thing to live in this society, to know who to trust and to know who not, to know where they are limping, and to be clear that Not everything a group of children does, no matter how many they are and all agree, is fine (and more if what they propose hurts another child and that child in question is your brother).
14. Because they will learn to solve problems
And to forgive, and to get out of difficult situations, and to share the effort to achieve something, and they will make pacts, and they will work as a team for a common good. And sometimes even for an individual good. And all that learning, thinking, negotiating, speaking, reaching agreements, will be an unpayable baggage for the day they should use those same tools with other children and adults.
Photos | iStock
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